Jillapalooza

IM IN UR OCEAN. EATIN UR CARDZ.

Hunting Access, Huntington, dive 35

Dive: 35
Season Dive: 3
Date: 7/12/09
Site: Huntington Access, Huntington
Avg/Max Depth: 19/40
Temp: 63
TBT/CBT: 1:09/27:56
Buddies: Curtis & Kristen

Once again, Curtis’s rendition:

The “winter like” morning wasn’t very inviting in regards to diving. The morning air was crisp at 55 degrees. We took our time eating breakfast and drinking cabin coffee before packing the car and heading out. We first stopped at the west end of Huntington looking for a site called “Gettin’ the Shaft” which is a “must see” and I’ve never been. Trouble is the road is blocked off and is meant only for pedestrians. There is a steep goat path that can be used but isn’t exactly a dive site. We decided against the treacherous climb and headed for the Huntington Public Access. As we piled back in the car the MSD van showed up with Mark C. bringing some students out.

When we arrived at the site the cold weather was gone and it was a beautiful mid morning. We had the site to ourselves except for a fisherman dropping his boat in. I snapped a few pics while getting ready. Such fantastic scenery…

We started the dive by placing the flag and swimming to the right, following the old mining road. Holy smokes was visibility good!

We dipped down to the 40 foot mark which would be like the second spiral of a circular road. Not much to look at, no trees, no fish, just loose rocks, and weeds. We ascended a bit to another flat area with more weeds. This entire side of the pit reminds me of a giant staircase. Flat road beds separated by sharp drop offs. I think we saw at least three levels of it. There were a few suckers swimming around and I even caught a glimpse of a trout but not much else. Around 30 minutes in to the dive I dipped back down to 35 feet to cool off before heading for the shallows and turning around.

The way back had more fish life. The terrain was flat weed beds between gentle slopes. The weed beds had all sorts of small fish. Kristen and Jill got a kick out of laying down in the weeds and watching the fish at eye level with the blue abyss as a back drop.

There was one rocky area that was swarming with fish for no apparent reason. It didn’t seem to be any special structure. We stopped for a while and I was surrounded by the little devils. Making me go cross-eyed. I didn’t notice them harassing the ladies. I thought of Mike S. getting viciously attacked in the lip by a sunny at this very site. Haha!!! Further along I noticed a ledge in 3 feet of water. I creeped up and found numerous sunfish guarding their spawning beds. The sunlight beating down made it quite a sight.

Getting close to the exit we grabbed the flag and headed for shore. As we went I found another bunch of spawning beds. They look so darn pretty snuggled in their little beds.

What a turn around from the early morning. It turned out to be a perfect day. The dive was awesome, spectacular visibility, fish life, and buddies.

Source

I really must get in the habit of dive blogging right away.

Gruntenheave, Joan, dive 34

Dive: 34
Season Dive: 2
Date: 7/4/09
Site: Gruntenheave, Joan
Avg/Max Depth: 14/22
Temp: 63
TBT/CBT: 1:09/26:47
Buddies: Curtis, Kristen & Ted

What better way to spend the 4th of July than diving? And what better way to remember all about it than to blog about it 6 weeks later? Too bad my dive computer doesn’t record experiences. For your reading pleasure, please enjoy Curtis’s rendition:

Our diving plans were thwarted by my being sick on Friday morning. Saturday we gave it another go and it was a success. Jill requested we dive someplace with lots of fish so I suggested Joan for the two nice beaver piles. When we arrived at the site we were surprised it was completely empty. No divers, no campers, sweet. There was a loon swimming right by our entrance, maybe we’d see it on our dive? The four of us suited up and made the hike down the steep bank to the water. We stuck Jill with the little 63 so the rest of us air hogs would have a chance to accumulate some bottom time.

We swam to the right towards the beaver piles. Right away we noticed the horrible vis. Below 15 feet we couldn’t see more than 5 feet because of a brown haze. It was decent on top. Kristen and I both had to surface to fix a leaky mask. While fixing my mask I noticed one of my gloves needed some correcting as well. Once underway Ted and I noticed a nice northern leading the way. It kept our attention in the otherwise barren terrain. Kristen and Jill were lagging behind too far to see it. I happened to look away and missed the highlight which Ted later described. The northern pounced on a sunfish at the bottom. When I looked it was arranging the sunny in it’s mouth and choked it down. Nice.

At the first beaver pile there were quite a few sunnies, large mouth bass, and rock bass. Not nearly as many fish as expected but still enjoyable. We slowed our pace quite a bit to take it all in before continuing on to the second one. It was way farther away than I expected. I started to get nervous that Jill was getting close to half psi so I asked, 1100. Another 20 feet or so and we were at the second pile. Again plenty of fish but not like expected. We spent a short time watching the fish then swam back in high gear.

When we passed the first beaver pile I swam on the shallow side and notice some huge sunfish spawning in a ‘hole’. There was also a cluster of big ones around some old tree trunks.

The rest of the dive was just a quick swim back. At the exit Ted and I did some rings. We were both hitting them like a couple of pros. I had quite a few doubles go up and after I snapped a pic of one set I noticed Ted hitting all kinds of good ones.

Source

Actually, I’m about 87% positive that I had a write-up of this dive, but I can’t seem to find it on my laptop anywhere.

3rd Annual Dead Lake Wknd, part 1

Nick and I are having our 3rd Annual camping weekend at my parents’ cabin on Dead Lake. We arrived at 3:30am on Wed night/Thurs morning. My mom was there so we tried to let ourselves in quietly. The front screen door was locked. Crap. We went to the back door but the deadbolt was locked. No key for the deadbolt. Crap. My mom’s window was open so I whispered “mom” a few times, not wanting to startle her awake. Nick wondered why I was whispering, so I started saying it a bit louder. Each time I did she would just drown me out with louder snoring. Finally I yelled “MOM” and she woke up and said “WHAT?” and I said “let us in” and she said “WHO?” … Who the heck did she think was there calling her mom? She let us in and we went straight to bed.

On Thursday we got up and headed to Perham to buy groceries for the weekend. We ended up eating lunch at a tasty Chinese restaurant. When we got back I had the joy of working from the cabin. Pangie (Panda and Angie) showed up in the early evening and Jake and Sarah showed up at 12:30am, right about the time I was having my third [very] strong Bloody Mary. The six of us sat by the fire for a few hours, discussing whether or not turkeys will drown in the rain*, will donkeys will starve themselves to death?† and that shooting stars are in fact not stars but meteors. After finishing my drink and giving Angie my alcohol infused pickle, Jake started taunting me that I couldn’t handle drinking one of his warm Natty Ice beers. Of course I took him up on the offer. Truth be told, I should have stopped drinking after the second Bloody. Shortly after finishing the Natty Ice I expelled most of the contents of my belly. Twice. Although it was nice to be by a lake since I could wash my face off and such. At some point I also fell over in the camping chair on top of the Natty Ice. I went to bed while having room spinnies, which I suppose was a bad idea.

Friday morning I woke up feeling fantastic considering the events of the night before. I got out of bed and started to perk some coffee. While waiting for it to start perking I started feeling not so well. I laid down on the nearest air mattress so that I could still her the percolator. After writhing around for a bit the vomiting started. Since I had no liquid in my belly it was just bile. Gross. I started hitting the water hard so that there would be something for me to throw up. So from 10am to about 5pm it was a constant rotation of vomit, hot sweats, cold sweats, nap, repeat. Everyone kept telling me to eat so I ate 3 grapes courtesy of Deebz (Smitty and Deebz showed up somewhere in the above mentioned time frame). They didn’t stay down long, and I had absolutely no appetite. Each time I would wake up from a mini nap I felt fine, but once I sat up it would all go downhill. I could see everyone outside having fun, it was one of those perfect days. And I’m real glad that they all left their cell phones inside, one of which seemed to ring every 30 minutes or so. When everyone came in for a snack I realized how hungry I was. I could hear them talking about how delicious the strawberry rhubarb bars and smoked gouda cheese were. When everyone left for a pontoon ride I ventured out into the kitchen. I still felt sick, but I didn’t feel like I would be sick again so I binged on Cheez-Its, chewing them well so it wouldn’t be uncomfortable if they came back up. I had a bit of a headache for the remainder of the evening and felt a little woozy, but other than that I was almost fully functional.

Nick slow cooked BBQ chicken legs and made tin foil taters for dinner. So delicious. After dinner Sarah and I went to the Wagon Wheel to get some shiners for Travis since he wouldn’t be here til midnight. They were sold out for the day so we ventured into Perham to get some. When we got back to the cabin Nick, Pangie, Jake and Smitty went fishing and we found poor Deebz by her lonesome wondering where we had gone. We got a little bit of reading time in on the porch before the bugs came out and started viciously attacking. The temp cooled down outside and it was quite comfortable, but inside it was still stifling hot. The fishing crew got back right after dark when the bugs were real bad. Poor Angie had her hands full of stuff and couldn’t fight them off as she ran up to the cabin.

We could see lightening across the lake and knew the weather was going to take a bit of a turn for the evening. It started getting windy and the rain started. Travis, Marshall and Olson showed up and set up tents in the dark. Adam and Laura showed up around 1am, just as everyone was going to bed.

To be continued…

*Panda claimed that turkeys drown in the rain because they look up to see what’s going on and aren’t smart enough to put their heads back down. His basis for this reasoning is that one of his turkeys died and it had just rained.

†Angie said if you put two buckets of food on either side of a donkey, they will not know which one to eat out of and stand in the middle until they die.

Arco Point, North Alstead, dive 33

Dive: 33
Season Dive: 1
Date: 6/13/09
Site: Arco Point, North Alstead
Avg/Max Depth: 16/24
Temp: 59
TBT/CBT: 0:55/25:38
Buddies: Curtis & Kristen (& Nick, Mike & Adam)

The long awaited first dive of the season finally came last weekend!! In attendance were Nick, Curtis, Blog Reader Kristen, Mike, Adam and myself. Our desired dive location was Arco Point located in North Alstead. Dumbheadedness ensued the moment we entered the pits. Wrong turns, backward hookups, forgotten hookups, forgotten weights, gloves stuck to heads. Fortunately non of these errors were executed by me. For my first dive all went quite smoothly.

Our group got divided in half almost immediately. Kristen tagged along with Curtis and since (for the record) Kristen and I were officially buddies I tagged along with her. Besides, I like being in Curtis’s group, his frog swim is very calming to follow.

It was refreshing to be back in the water. We stayed around 20′ for the majority of the dive and the temp stayed at about 59 degrees, not too chilly. We made friends with a rock bass, but other than that there weren’t too many fishes spotted. Except for the Mega Eelpout which Curtis somehow commanded to attack me. I narrowly escaped.

Because of the landscape we bobbed from 20′ to 10′ and back a few times. That always seems to take a toll on one of my ears. For the return trip I tried to stay above 15′ which wasn’t a problem, especially when we neared our exit and the depth decreased to one foot. I wanted to stand up, but since I was virtually laying on my stomach from swimming it was much too late to get any type of footing. Curtis was smart enough to go around the rocky sandbaresque obstruction. Nick asked why us girls were surface swimming, probably hoping that we ran out of air before he did for once (psssht, yeah right, I finished with 1800psi).

Good dive buddies, good dive.

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